Busy Weekend
I’m off to The LA Forum for the Welcome 2 America show. Then home to the desert and back to Long Beach on Saturday for the Long Beach Comic Expo. It’ll be a busy couple of days, but I’m looking forward to it. Much better than sitting in the desert, bored all day long.
A recap of this weekend and photos will be forthcoming. Maybe even a few updates while I’m out there.
Mega-Spirograph
One of the toys I played with quite a lot as a child was Spirograph. Being stuck in a hospital bed in a half-body cast limited the typed of toys I could play with, so I have fond memories of this one.
Paper, pens, and an assortment of gears and other shapes with a guide called a stator pinned to the page. You then spin the gears in the stator using an assortment of pens as an axle for the gears. This created a multitude of shapes on the paper. Simple but fun for a kid. I liked it anyway.
So check out this jumbo sized Drawing Machine that works on similar principles. Pretty cool:
The damn web 2.0 embedding feature won’t load on my crappy Internet, so click here
Yeah, it’s a bit of a ripoff…
BUT I LOVE IT!
Denied
@alyankovic was told by the Lady Gaga camp that he couldn’t put his “Born This Way” parody on his new album. It’s shame, because it’s quite good. The whole story in Al’s words. Here’s to Al for being respectful enough to ask. I just wonder if it was Gaga or her lawyers that actually said no? I wonder also if some “superstars” take themselves a bit too seriously.
Scars
More than a physical remnant of an injury scars are a reminder of what was. I was looking at my legs tonight. I have approximately 13 scars from various surgical procedures performed on me in my childhood. I think back to the summers I spent in hospitals. It was never a good time, never fun.
The first thing that comes to mind is the pain. I can’t begin to describe the intense and unending pain of the first weeks after a surgery. Cuts not only of flesh but bones being cut broken and manipulated. I’m almost certain that my mind has blocked out the worst of it all. My mother has told of things that I have done and said during the times of immense stress. Some of it I have no memory at all.
I can remember the anxiety I felt at the time. Going to see the surgeon on a yearly basis. Agonizing about the fact that I was most likely going to have to endure the pain again. At times I wake up in a cold sweat, reliving in dreams the things I went through. Scars on my subconscious, I suppose.
I am thankful for a mother who was always there. I can only imagine the pain she went through watching all of these things take place. I am grateful she was there to be a support and an advocate when I needed it. I can remember her fighting for me when the pain was so great I felt I would go crazy. When the nurses would say I was overreacting as the pain in my knee was growing. She fought and argued until the plaster cast around my knee was removed to reveal a pressure sore which would have taken my leg. I still have that scar till this day.
My summers were spent in bed mostly. On my back in a plaster cast from the waist down. I read books by the dozen and watched a lot of 1960’s and 70’s TV. My memories are of Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis, John Carter of Mars, and Tarzan, as well as I Dream of Jeannie, Batman, The Six Million Dollar Man, Star Trek, and Gilligan’s Island. All of these were my summertime friends. To this day I still watch the reruns, they are a comforting memory for me.
I remember, I was probably 2 years old. The plaster was being sawed off my legs with the electric saw at the hospital. I knew that they had cut too deep. I was telling them so, my mother was saying so. They said it wasn’t so, but, they had cut so deep the saw had actually burned my leg from friction.
The car ride home from L.A. to the desert was about and hour and a half. The muscles in my legs atrophied from not having moved in 3 months. The muscles would contract involuntarily at the slightest touch or movement. The pain was almost as intense as it had been right after the surgery. But I do know that it didn’t last as long. I spent the months after this re-learning how to walk and do all the things I took for granted the year before. Am I better off after all of this? Most definitely. I would not be as mobile or coordinated as I am today without all of this.
I don’t think of these things very often. The red, puffy, and insanely itchy incision scars have faded to white. In some cases almost imperceptible. In others a sunken crevice on the maps that are my legs. A permanent reminder of where I have been in life.
Waiting…
I decided to move some work related files off my web host and onto my laptop. I need to start building things locally. I don’t like using my personal resources for these types of job. It was necessary in this instance though. Let me just say one thing…my Internet provider sucks.
Being stuck out here in the Mojave Desert it’s my only option. But it’s so damn slow. I started the transfer of files about 45 minutes ago. But instead of going down, the que of files to move keeps going up. At this rate I should be done around bedtime in 5 hours give or take. I want to move, I hate this, it’s not conducive to running a business. Verizon and other providers need to get off their collective butts and expand services out here. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Though there have been rumors of something coming soon, I have yet to see evidence of it.
Comic Con Season Starts Soon
I’m excited for the comic convention season to start for Pepe Melan and myself. It’s hectic, but always fun. I’m hoping to have a little extra money this years for a few goodies. Not necessary though. We always have a great time.
Is it work? Yeah, maybe technically it is, but I always have a great time it never feels like actual work. I can’t draw and I rarely get asked to sign anything, I’m just happy selling the comic, meeting people, and seeing all the creative people we know or haven’t met before. There is always a ton of great costumes too. It’s energizing. That’s where most of the fun comes from I think.
Keep an eye on this site for updates and photos from our convention travels. I think there may even be one or two that we haven’t been to before. I may also have news that I’m dying to talk about, but I’m waiting until I’m completely certain before I say anything. Don’t want to jinx myself.
I see light!
Hopefully it’s the light at the end of the tunnel for this project and not a freight train. I’m almost done. Just waiting on some outside sources for input. I will be glad to be moving forward.
It’s a little hot here today but not terribly so. Only 83, but that is fairly warm for April I guess. I’m going try to rest up as much as I can this week. Friday is the Prince show and then the next day is the Long Beach 1 day Comic Con. I have a feeling I’m going to be exhausted after all that. But I’m looking forward to it all.
I will write more about this project when it’s completed.
They’re like my children…
I’m sure you’ve heard it before from artist type people. That the things the create whether it be music, films, stories, or whatever, they always say things like “My creations are like my children.” It turns out, for me at least, it’s a somewhat a true statement. I’m finding hard to edit, change, or cut parts of my writings. Part of me holds on to things I’ve created. Regardless of whether it may be crap.
I’m at that point where changing things might be a good thing. Nothing has been set in stone by publishing. It should be easy, right? It’s not, for me anyway. They may be redheaded stepchildren. But they’re my redheaded stepchildren (apologies to any redhead who may be reading this.) So I’m considering looking for an editor. Failing that I may pass off a few things to my friends who write if they are willing to wade through it all. I guess I’m looking for the diamond in the rough, so to speak. There has to be at least one…somewhere.
Maybe someday I can be like George Lucas and destroy someone’s childhood memories of my work?
Ad Inserter
